UX & USER JOURNEYS

INTRODUCTION

Knowing your user may sound like an overused phrase in marketing, but when it comes to user experience and user journeys it can’t be said enough. UX goes beyond just the way a user interacts with a web site, UX is a broad discipline digging deeper into the needs of users and providing a better experience for them in all aspects. Just as important is the user journey – how does a visitor navigate through your website? How is the visitor guided towards your service or product? What makes the visitor want to see more about your service or product? By having clear and structured architecture plans, you can guide visitors to the pages you want them to see.

If you want your visitors to enjoy their interaction with your brand and become customers, it is time to start focusing on UX and User Journeys. Everything you do should be done with the user – the potential lead – in mind. User confusion is through the failure of design, and for your visitors to want to spend money on your service or product they need to understand what they’re looking at. From web design to content creation – everything the user interacts with falls under user experience; which is why it’s best to choose a marketing house that knows UX and integrates it within marketing strategies, making the most out of your web site or content. User experience takes planning and expertise, as the architecture of a site should be planned well before the design or development commences so that the journey is clear from the get go. User journeys are not something that can be figured out afterwards – and last minute or lack of user journey planning can leave a site messy and confusing for users, essentially throwing away potential leads for your business.

KNOW THE STATS

2025 BY Customer Experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.

Brands with exceptional UX are the brands that win repeat visits, loyal customers and returning leads. UX benefits the user, and benefits your brand – and ends up bringing in better ROI.

THE USER JOURNEY

The first steps to creating a great user experience is clarifying the user journey before you begin anything else. Planning out how the user will come to the call to action on your site allows the web site to be built with the user as the main point of focus – and with the site existing to bring in new custom and delight the current customers, the user should be the focus.

A clear journey from the landing page and/or home page to the call to action is necessary if you want any visitors to come across your product or service and not just be a fleeting momentary visit. Web sites should never be confusing. A confusing website is an off-putting website.

SITE ARCHITECTURE

To go through this process, it’s important to start by distinguishing the architecture goals of the site. By establishing a site structure and outlining all the routes that a user will take, UX specialists will make sure that users are seeing your call to action and clicking those buttons. Using flow charts and site mapping mean knowing exactly how users will interact with the content or the web site. Having strong architecture means having strong call to actions: in turn, closing more leads.

ANALYTICS

Once the site is designed and developed, it’s important not to forget about UX because you’ve planned the user journeys. This is where analytics come in – but not just your usual google analytics. When it comes to UX, analytics can go far deeper into how visitors behave when they interact with your site or your content. This means A/B testing to see what variants users respond to most positively, heat mapping clicks on the site to see that users can follow the planned user journey, and even eye tracking to see where the users are drawn to on the pages. Knowing this ensures that the architecture is successful in drawing users through the site to the call to action of your business.

UX ON MOBILE

Even with the best page architecture you could be missing potential leads if the site isn’t mobile responsive. 52% of users said that bad mobile experiences make them less likely to interact, so if the site doesn’t give full functionality on mobile a lot of people won’t be seeing the right pages, and not following the right journey. We know that by simply ensuring that sites are mobile responsive, a lot of unnecessary user confusion can be avoided, and in 2020 all sites should be mobile responsive. For the user to experience your web site and its contents properly, they need to be accessible and developed with at least three break points to adjust to different screen sizes. Remember to consider fonts and how they look across screen sizes, and always have the body text and headlines responsive. You don’t want lost text when a user opens the site on different platforms.

UX & CONTENT

Beyond the site itself and its functionality is the content. Content marketing is designed specifically to provide a service beyond your own product, so it comes naturally that this is an integral part of user experience. It’s key to how a user interacts with your brand. Visitors will be reading, watching, or listening to your content and it’s important to make sure all the content created for your site is formatted correctly for digital. 79% of users will leave a page and search for another to complete a task if the content is not properly optimised.

IMPORTANT THINGS TO CONSIDER

FINDABLE DESIREABLE ACCESSIBLE Your content should be in easy to reach places – think about the user journey for each piece of content. Will anybody want to read your content? This should be considered throughout content creation. The content should not only be easy to find but easy to consume. Overly complicated content can hinder accessibility.

VALUABLE CREDIBLE USABLE

Content should hold a purpose beyond the value of your own product or service – what does your content offer your users?

Having credible writers and/or sources will validate what you are saying. You want to be held as an expert in your field.

High quality and good style in the right form means a great usable piece of content.